Why This Is the Last Tool in the List
Most podcasters start here. They start looking for promo swaps and collaboration partners before they have done anything else. That is backwards.
If your show is not defined, you do not know who to partner with. If your keywords are not set, you do not know what searches a partner could help you rank for. If your cover art is not converting, the extra traffic from a promo swap just bounces. If your transcripts are full of errors, the new listeners who search for you after hearing about you on another show cannot find you.
That is why the Collab Finder is last. Do everything else first. Then, when you reach out to a partner, your house is clean. Every new listener they send your way has the best possible chance of sticking around.
How It Works
The Collab Finder is a spreadsheet with my formulas built in. You do not need any special software. You do not need an API key. You need Google Sheets and about 30 minutes.
The system helps you find shows that share your audience but do not compete with you directly. Not shows in the same category. Shows with the same vibe. That distinction matters because a comedy show about books and a comedy show about movies might share more audience than two book podcasts that sound nothing alike.
- 1Open the spreadsheet and make your own copy.
- 2Start with 1 to 3 shows you already know share your audience. Put them in.
- 3The spreadsheet walks you through finding more shows like them based on episode titles, tone, and topic overlap.
- 4Rate each potential partner on size compatibility, audience overlap, and accessibility.
- 5Use the outreach tracker to log who you contacted, when, and what happened.
Get the Collab Finder
Click below and Google will ask you to make a copy. Your data stays in your own Google Drive. My formulas are built in. Just fill in the blanks.
Ready to find your collaboration partners?
Get the Collab Finder SpreadsheetGoogle Sheets. Free. Makes a copy in your own Google Drive. No account with us required.
What a Good Promo Swap Looks Like
A promo swap is simple. You run a short ad for their show on your podcast. They run a short ad for your show on theirs. No money changes hands. Both shows get exposed to a new audience.
The trick is finding shows where the swap is roughly equal. A show with 10,000 downloads per episode and a show with 200 downloads per episode is not a fair trade. The Collab Finder includes a size compatibility check so you are not wasting your time pitching shows that are way above or below your weight class.
When you find a match, keep the outreach simple. Something like: "Hey, I host [your show]. We are in different categories but I think we share a lot of listeners. Would you be interested in a promo swap? Here is what I am thinking." That is it. No long pitch. No media kit. Just one podcaster talking to another.
What It Does
Every tool in this list solves one problem. One thing. That is it.
The Collab Finder solves this one: you do not know which shows to partner with. You could scroll through podcast directories for hours and still pick the wrong ones because category tags do not tell you anything about vibe or audience overlap. This spreadsheet gives you a system for finding the right partners and tracking your outreach.
Why This Matters
Promo swaps are the most underused growth lever in podcasting. They cost nothing. They work because the recommendation comes from a host the listener already trusts. And they compound over time because every swap puts you in front of an audience that is already conditioned to listen to podcasts.
But most podcasters either never try them or they try once with the wrong partner and give up. The wrong partner is a show in the same category with a completely different energy. The right partner is a show in a different category with the same energy. Finding the right partner is what this tool does.
How I Got Here
I built the first version of this as an automated web tool that used AI to match shows by analyzing their metadata. It worked okay for finding topic matches. But it completely failed at finding vibe matches. Two banned books podcasts might have identical metadata and totally different audiences. Meanwhile, a comedy podcast about books and a comedy podcast about movies might share 80% of their listeners.
So I scrapped the automated version and built a spreadsheet that uses episode titles as the vibe signal instead of category tags. Episode titles reveal tone, energy, and personality in a way that metadata never can. That is the insight the tool is built on.
Where It Fits
There are only three ways to grow a podcast. Get more listeners. Get those listeners to come back more often and listen longer. Make enough money to keep doing it.
The Collab Finder sits in that first one. But unlike the other Gear 1 tools that focus on search and discovery, this one focuses on partnership discovery. It is the last step because it works best when everything else is already in place.
© 2026 Dan Schulz / JenDanCo LLC. All rights reserved.
This tool is free to use. It is not free to copy, redistribute, rebrand, or resell. The frameworks, methodology, and code are the intellectual property of Dan Schulz and Podcast Grow Gears. If you want to share this tool with someone, send them here.